Harry Gallagher
In A Little Corner Of An English Pub
Come warm your chap bitten skin
by the logs-on-the-fire picture
on the wall of this old bank,
picked up for a knockdown sum
by a cheap chain pub firm,
selling nostalgia and piss
on the back of their staff
and their cheapaschips lives.
Take your place in the corner,
stage whisper how things
were better in the old days,
when Summers ran endless
and England was English
and who won the cup anyway?
And how you don’t really care,
but why don’t they integrate?
Mind, they’re all the fucking same
but you can’t say that anymore.
All these PC do gooders,
trying to tell us what to think.
Well listen Abdul, this is England.
Engerland! Engerland! Engerland!
And we’ll sing and we’ll sing
about how as little boys
nobody praised us,
nobody loved us
and nobody tucked us up in bed.
And how it never did us any harm,
it’s just we like raising our right arms
to show we belong
to someone, anyone.
Harry Gallagher's new collection Northern Lights is out now from Stairwell Books. He has previously been published by The Interpreter's House, Prole, Ofipress, Poets' Republic, Black Light Engine Room, Algebra of Owls, Clear Poetry, Rebel Poetry and many others. www.harrygallagherpoet.wordpress.com
O Little Town
O little town,
O little town.
Home to the hopeless,
the wornout and frayed,
where the past is a picture
on the present’s ragged wall,
where the river’s a reminder
of how faraway the world is.
But who needs a river
when you’re putty
in the fingers
of a kind eyed bailiff,
who bears a perfect pained look
that says There goes another,
just like the others,
falling through the cracks
of a brokenbacked town,
crying for a saviour in the dark.
Trumpy twittered
Whisky flowing,
advisors abed.
Manchild on his phone
raging undead
about liars, fakes,
all who are wrong.
Sadly for him,
1 character too lon
thistles stretch their prickly arms afar
thistles stretch their prickly arms afar
Militant Thistles